When 21 Jump Street gave Vancouver a star turn

John Mackie03.09.2012

Undercover at a boys’ military school, Jump Street officers Hanson (Johnny Depp) and Penhall (Peter DeLouise) face off in a heated wrestling match a part of their search for cadets suspected of assaulting gay men in “Honor Bound episode of 21 Jump Street broadcast November 8, 1987.
/ Vancouver Sun

ARCHIVED FILES - Detectives (Johnn Depp. left) and Penhall (Peter deLouise) pose as transfer student ruffians who are enraged upon discovering a police officer is accuse of molesting a fellow student in the :Blindsided" episode of the one-hour drama series 21 Jump Street, aired on August 23, 1989.
(With story by John Mackie.)
Handout
/ Vancouver Sun

Terry David Mulligan recalls his 21 Jump Street days with Johnny Depp here.

VANCOUVER — The blue neon “21” makes a zzz sound as it springs to life, followed by the fffffttttt of a spray can writing “Jump Street” graffiti on a brick wall.

Today this cheesy bit of video seems a bit ridiculous, as ‘80s as big hair and synth pop. But hey, that pretty much sums up 21 Jump Street, one of the first TV series to put Vancouver on the map.

Jump Street has pretty much faded from the public consciousness, but it’s about to stage a comeback: Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum star in a 21 Jump Street movie that comes out next week.

The movie is a spoof, but the original series was dead serious. Filmed here between 1986 and 1991, it introduced TV audiences around the world to the gritty back lanes of Gastown, the gritty hallways of Vancouver high schools, and a bunch of not-so-gritty young actors.

The most famous Jump Street alumni is Johnny Depp, who played Officer Tom Hanson. But the one with the biggest Vancouver connection is Peter DeLuise, who played Officer Doug Penhall.

DeLuise liked Vancouver so much he still lives here.

“I married a girl from Newfoundland, and I’m very happy here, happy to raise a kid here,” says DeLuise, 45.

He doesn’t act that much these days, but DeLuise has a thriving career as a director of TV shows. He’s worked on all sorts of stuff, from Pam Anderson’s V.I.P. to Sanctuary. His bread and butter has been the Stargate franchise, where he’s directed 70 episodes of the show and its various incarnations.

Still, he admits he knew nothing about Vancouver before arriving here to shoot Jump Street.

“My knowledge of Vancouver and Canada was limited to what I knew about Bob and Doug McKenzie,” deadpans DeLuise, the son of the late comedian Dom DeLuise.

“I thought they were funny, talking out of the side of their mouths and saying ‘eh’ and wearing toques. I was also under the impression that I was going to a land where there was nine feet of snow piled up on either side of the road at all times, and you had to have snow chains on your tires year-round.”

He landed his 21 Jump Street role at a casting call in Los Angeles. The day he auditioned, he tried out for three shows. When he got a callback for a police drama, he told his agent he must be mistaken, because he thought he had auditioned for a police comedy, à la Police Academy.

He vividly remembers his first day on the series.

“Our first day of shooting was American Thanksgiving in ‘86,” he recounts.

“The last Thursday in November. I remember that very specifically, because to me working on Thanksgiving was inconceivable, but it’s just another Thursday here in Canada. Our big consolation prize was that they served turkey off the catering truck that day.”

The cast was very young (he was 20, Depp was 23), and they had a lot of fun.

“I was not very well behaved,” he admits. “I remember I was a discipline problem. I was a typical American male at 20 years old, and I was causing trouble whenever I could.

“We would just be silly, and our work ethic was not as good as it could be. We were sleep-deprived, and we were punchy, you get kind of drunk with fatigue.

“One of the silly things we did [was that] when Stephen Williams came into the fray, after replacing Frederick Forest, we initiated him by burning our underwear together in a pile.

“We called it the ginch burning. We put all our ginch together in a pile, saturated it with Johnny’s lighter fluid and then set fire to it. And that’s how we embraced him into the fold.”

The series got quite a bit of hype in the day. It was the lead series for the first night of all-original programming on the Fox network, which started up in October 1986 (Jump Street debuted April 12, 1987).

“Fox was a fledgling network, and they only had one night of programming,” he relates.

“So they attacked Sunday night, because they realized that all the other networks had ignored Sunday night. The Sunday night lineup started with 21 Jump Street, their flagship show. Then it was Tracey Ullman and some other shows I can’t remember [Werewolf, Married With Children and Duet]. Tracey Ullman had The Simpsons on as a cartoon, as an animated short in the middle.”

Johnny Depp quickly became the star of the show, but he wasn’t too happy with Fox’s marketing schemes, such as a poster featuring Depp holding a gun and the tag line, “some kids pack a lunch.”

“He was packing a gun, right?” says DeLuise. “That just drove him nuts. He thought that was awful. At the age we were, it was ‘Hey, we’re actors, we’re not playthings. We’re not just fodder for Tiger Beat, we want to be considered real legitimate actors.’”

When another would-be matinee idol, Richard Grieco, was added to the series, the Fox publicity machine went crazy.

“They had this onslaught of publicity where they were running commercials that were [over the top] ... you couldn’t even tell what product they were selling,” says DeLuise.

“It was just ‘Johnny Depp! Richard Grieco! Johnny Depp! Richard Grieco!’ It was so blatant that Dennis Miller on Saturday Night Live poked fun at the advertising campaign.

“During the news segment of Saturday Night Live, he sat there and looked at the lens. An image of Johnny Depp came up behind him and he said ‘Johnny Depp,’ in kind of super-sexy voice. Richard Grieco’s face came up and he said ‘Richard Grieco!’

“This continued three or four times over, with Johnny’s face, Richard’s face and Dennis Miller saying ‘Johnny Depp! Richard Grieco!’ Then he was completely out of breath, as if he was sexually exhausted. And he said ‘I don’t know about you, but these guys are hot!’”

The show did reasonably well, but when The Simpsons became a mega-hit, Fox head Barry Diller decided Jump Street wasn’t pulling in a big enough audience, and gonged it.

Depp went off to be a movie star, while DeLuise stayed with Jump Street for a fifth and final season. The show’s maverick producer, Stephen J. Cannell, funded the final season himself, so he would make more money putting it in syndication.

Vancouver producer John Smith was brought in for the final season and asked DeLuise if he’d like to direct some episodes, which led to a new career.

“I felt it was a natural progression,” he says.

“It was more responsibility, certainly it’s more challenging. There’s an auteur-ship where you get to have slightly more say. You don’t have complete artistic freedom, by any means, but I found it was much more stimulating to direct.”

DeLuise became a landed immigrant, and eventually became a full Canadian citizen. Smith brought him onto Stargate, and he wound up working on the show for a dozen years. His current gig is directing Level Up, a live action show on the Comedy Network.

He still keeps up with many of his co-stars from Jump Street.

“I talk to Holly [Robinson] once in a while. I directed a few episodes of V.I.P. when Dustin [Nguyen] was on that show with Pamela Anderson. Stephen Williams, I had him brought onto Stargate as one of the generals.

“Johnny and I had some conversations when he was in town doing The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. We had a little sit-down, a little chat. [But] I hadn’t spoken to Johnny very much, he’s a busy boy.”

DeLuise still does some acting, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

“I miss acting very much,” he says. “I’ve tried to act a couple of times, but I find I can’t afford to act, here in Vancouver. There is simply not enough money in it. The only way to act now is if I hire myself when I’m directing. I’m inevitably available while I’m directing.”

Does he still get recognized from his Jump Street days? Not often, but sometimes.

“There will be times when people say ‘You look familiar ...,’ he says. “Which opens it up for my best comeback, ‘Well, I do a lot of porn. I’m an actor, and I do a lot of porn.’ Which always puts them in a very awkward situation. They don’t want to pursue the fact that they recognize me, if in fact I have done porn. That would be bad for them.”

jmackie@vancouversun.com

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When 21 Jump Street gave Vancouver a star turn

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